REV. SAMUEL MAITLAND. 125 



it must be said that wherever they take they bite. They 1845. 

 are imbued, but not in excess, with a kind of humour 

 which seems almost their own. It has more likeness to 

 the peculiar humour of Pascal than is seen in any writer 

 of our day.' 1 Though Dr. Maitland was not a Mathema- 

 tician, the subjects of mutual interest were man} r , and 

 their correspondence touches upon all kinds of questions, 

 from those of Dr. Maitland's works which involve much 

 sound learning on the theology of the dark ages, to his 

 latest little volume, Superstition and Science, in which 

 the phenomena of spiritualism and the miracles of the 

 Catholic Church are considered in relation to Scientific 

 inquiry. The attention which Mr. De Morgan had Date of 

 given to the question of Easter was shared with Dr. 

 Maitland. My husband had contributed an article to 

 the Companion to the Almanac fur 1845, giving the 

 reasons why then, as in 1818, Easter Sunday had fallen 

 on, instead of after, the first full moon after the Vernal 

 Equinox. There had been much fruitless discussion on 

 this in 1818, and to avoid a repetition of it for the 

 question was already agitated in Parliament a fall expla- 

 nation was given, in the above-mentioned article, of the 

 cause of deviation from the rule, and the relation of the 

 whole subject to the Christian and Jewish calendars. In 

 the next year, 1846, an article On the Earliest Printed 

 Almanacs gave further information, and his Book of 

 Almanacs, published in 1851, left no means of knowledge 

 wanting. Dr. Maitland's letters at this period showed 

 his interest in the Easter question. He was then librarian 

 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the library at 

 Lambeth Palace afforded him means of research in it, 

 and experience on another question, which was valuable a 

 few years later, when the British Museum Library Cata- 

 logue occupied the thoughts of scholars. 



My husband's acquaintance with Lord Brougham, 



1 From an obituary notice by Mr. De Morgan on the Royal 

 Society's Memoirs. 



